European explorers and settlers of the 16th and 17th centuries did not discover a “New World.” Indigenous people, in fact, have inhabited the region we now call “New England” for more than 12,000 years, since the glaciers retreated. Europeans who came to these shores encountered Indigenous peoples whose cultures reflected ancient and ongoing relationships with the land. The weather, the seasons, the movements of flora and fauna, and the land itself determined how and when they hunted, gathered, planted, harvested, fished, and celebrated.
Native societies across the continent made use of an abundance of natural resources from various environments and engaged in wide-ranging trade relations. Native communities developed complex kinship networks, military alliances, communication patterns, and material exchanges that were facilitated by travels along well-worn footpaths and waterways.
The surviving archaeological evidence provides some information about the earliest inhabitants of this region, but that record is incomplete. Native craftwork, clothing, homes, and tools were intricately made, but only fragments of these objects have survived. Most organic materials decomposed after burial for thousands of years in acidic soil. Fire-baked Native pottery – formed from coils of clay, tempered with shell, and scratched with designs – was relatively fragile, surviving mainly as shards. Lithics – in the forms of stone tools, knives, and weapons, primarily arrowheads – are far more durable, and have survived in abundance.
The denser material and documentary evidence that survives from the colonial contact era reflects the profound consequences of contact between European settlers and Indigenous Americans. The arrival of new trading partners and novel trade goods generated new relationships that, in many cases, destabilized old ones. Long-established trade routes transported European products far inland. These same routes also proved frighteningly efficient at transmitting diseases of European and Asiatic origin to which Native Americans lacked resistance. Epidemics of measles, smallpox, typhus, and tuberculosis wiped out entire communities. During the late 1500s, the death toll approached an unimaginable 90-95% in some parts of present-day New England. This “demographic catastrophe” had far-reaching cultural, economic, and political consequences.
During the same era when epidemic diseases were introduced, the “Great Migration” of English people to New England began. These colonial settlers brought with them assumptions and beliefs about religion, culture, rights, and political organization that conflicted with, and destabilized, Indigenous societies. This was especially true of beliefs concerning land transfer and ownership. Resulting conflicts over the land yielded tragic results.
